Day One as a Free Woman

20Dec

I slowly savored my first day of unemployment. I slept in, took care of a few business details, then met my friend Katie for lunch and finished the afternoon with a little Christmas shopping. Like me, Katie was let go as marketing director after a corporate buyout, so we had plenty of common experiences to chat about.

Katie has been dog sitting at her brother’s house in Old Palo Alto, so I rode up from Mountain View to her brother’s place, then we rode downtown together for lunch. Katie grabbed her nephew’s Electra Townie, which worked OK for her after she adjusted for the Townie’s flat foot slack geometry. She also grabbed her nephew’s skater-style helmet, which looked more stylish than it fit.

Our destination: Oren’s Hummus Shop, billed as “an authentic Israeli Restaurant in Silicon Valley.” I can’t attest to the restaurant being authentically Israeli, but it was truly Silicon Valley, with a disclaimer that the store was in beta and an internet passcode right on the wall menu.

My six item sampler had two kinds of eggplant, beets, carrots, a yogurt sauce that would be good on anything and something else that I can’t remember. All good. Katie’s hummus and falafel combo left her too full to finish the bowl. Could have been those thick and soft pita breads that went with everything.

After lunch, Katie ran off to meet some former colleagues, but suggested I check out Live Greene, a new “green” gift shop down the block. So I did. Among all the recycled paper and plastic items were a surprising number of recycled items recreated from bike parts, mainly chains and tubes. I may not ride my bike to be green per se, but it’s cool to see how the bicycle has become an icon for green, which makes sense of course.

Do you recycle any of your used bicycle parts for anything interesting? Is being green a factor in why you ride?

Nearly 32,000 Americans die in car crashes annually. 80% of car crashes are PREVENTABLE. If the TOASTER was killing that many people we'd think it was ridiculous. We'd un-plug it and say, let's Fix The Toaster.